1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a movable communication system in which a movable telephone, a portable telephone, a PHS (Personal Handy Phone) or the like is used as a personal station (hereinafter referred to as "personal station" (PS).
2. Description of Related Art
According to a conventional movable communication system, as practically used in Japanese public portable telephone service and PHS telephone service, each of all the base stations (radio wave control station) provides the same services (for example, calling, call-incoming (call reception), unconditional transfer to a voice mail or a phone-response machine, transfer under user-absence, non-response transfer, hand-over, etc.) to all the personal stations located in an area which is covered by each base station.
That is, for example, with respect to a call-incoming (call-reception) service and a calling service for a personal station, these services are allowed at any time for 24 hours by a base station which covers an area where the personal station concerned is located, except for a case where communication traffic increases temporarily and thus some restriction must be applied, and a case where a line is under busy status.
In the movable communication system as described above, call-incoming to a personal station and calling from a personal station are allowed to be freely carried out even in such a place that a paging tone generated from a personal station or a communication on the telephone puts others to annoyance (for example, in a concert hall, a library or the like), or at such a time during playing movies or lecturing, and such an inconvenient action cannot be avoided by this communication system.
Therefore, in order to inform a call-incoming (call-reception) to a user in such a place or at such a time, a personal station having a vibrator call mode in which a paging tone is not made, but the user is paged with vibration. However, in order to notify the call-incoming to the user (subscriber) with the vibration call, the subscriber is required to beforehand set a call-incoming mode to the vibration call mode. Further, although the paging tone is prohibited from being made in such a situation, the call-incoming to the personal station and the calling from the personal station are allowed to be carried out, so that the subscriber is allowed to have communication by intention.
In such a situation (place or time) where others are put to annoyance, the call-incoming to the personal station and the calling from the personal station would be impossible if the subscriber turns off the power of the personal station. It is determined by the subscriber's intention whether the power of the personal station is turned off or not. Therefore, all the subscribers do not necessarily turn off the power of their personal stations in such a situation. Further, if the power of the personal station is turned off by the subscriber, the subscriber cannot be paged during the power turn-off period even when his personal station receives a call.
The above-described problems are caused by the following situation that each of all the base stations is designed to provide the same services to all the personal stations which are located in an area which is covered by the base station.
Therefore, in order to solve the above problems, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (KOKAI) No. Hei-7-87568 proposes such a technique that a call-incoming prohibited area and a calling prohibited area are predetermined, and the call-incoming to all the personal stations located in the call-incoming prohibited area is prohibited while the calling from all the personal stations located in the calling prohibited area is prohibited.
In the above-described technique, the call-incoming prohibited area and the calling prohibited area may be controlled (varied) in accordance with year, month, day and hour to thereby achieve a temporary call-incoming prohibited area and a temporary calling prohibited area. That is, the call-incoming to the personal stations and the calling from the personal stations are prohibited in a predetermined time zone, however, these operations are allowed in the other time zones.
Further, in the above-described technique, during a personal station being located in a call-incoming prohibited area, a message from a caller is recorded when the personal station receives a call from the caller, and afterwards the recorded message is reproduced on the basis of a request from the subscriber of the personal station.
As described above, according to the above technique, in accordance with each area which is covered by each of all the base stations, the call-incoming to a personal station located in the area is prohibited and/or the calling from a personal station is prohibited in the area. That is, one or more areas which provide special services other than the calling service and the call-incoming service can be predetermined.
In the above technique, however, the subscriber of the personal station cannot know whether an area where the personal station is located (i.e., an area covering the personal station; hereinafter referred to as "personal station locating area") can provide the special services or not. For example, in a case where the area covering the personal station is a calling prohibited area, when the subscribers calls to a communication target, he or she cannot connect to the communication target to which the subscriber wishes to connect. In the present case, the subscriber cannot know the reason why he or she cannot connect to the communication target, and thus he or she take no countermeasure to such a situation. Further, for example, in the case where the call-incoming prohibited area (or calling prohibited area) is controlled in accordance with the year, the month, the data and the hour to set a temporary call-incoming prohibited area (or temporary calling prohibited area), even when a personal station is located in the same area, the subscriber of the personal station faces such a situation that the reception of a call (call-incoming) to the personal station (a calling from the personal station) is prohibited or allowed in accordance with a time zone for which the personal station is located in the area. Therefore, the subscriber gets confused with such a situation.
Further, according to the above technique, the call-incoming to all the personal stations which are located in each of all the call-incoming prohibited areas is prohibited. Therefore, for example, while a personal station is located in a call-incoming prohibited area, a call originator (caller) cannot make an urgent call to the subscriber of the personal station located in the call-incoming prohibited area at all times because the call-incoming to the personal station is prohibited in such an area irrespective of urgency of the call.